1Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, University of Alberta, 2Livestock Research Branch, Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, 3Laboratory of Functional Genomics of Early Embryonic Development, Université Laval

1Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, 2Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, 3Division of Neuropathology, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, 4Curriculum in Genetics and Molecular Biology, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, 5Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, 6Department of Radiation Oncology, Emory University School of Medicine, 7Department of Neurology, Neurosciences Center, University of North Carolina School of Medicine

Microarrays are important tools for profiling gene expression, and are based on complementary binding between probes that are attached to glass chips and nucleic acids derived from samples. Using these arrays, scientists can simultaneously evaluate the expression of thousands of genes. In addition, the expression profiles of different cells or tissue types can be compared, allowing researchers to deduce how the expression of different genes change during biological processes, and thus gain insight into how the genes may function in pathways or networks.Here, JoVE explains the principles behind microarrays. This is followed by a general protocol for performing a microarray experiment, and a brief introduction to analyzing microarray data. We end on a discussion of how scientists are currently using microarrays, for example to compare gene expression between different cell types derived from cancerous and non-cancerous tissues, to study important biological problems.…

1Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 3Department of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina, 4Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 5Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 6Department of Epidemiology, University of Michigan School of Public Health, 7Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics, Wayne State University School of Medicine